Social Cohesion Action Plan
House of Lords · Lords Chamber · 16 Mar 2026 · 45 speeches · Official Report
Statement
The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Monday 9 March.
“With permission, I will make a Statement on the Government’s action plan for social cohesion entitled Protecting What Matters .
Britain has faced global crises at many moments in our history; we got through them by staying strong and united. Today, we navigate new threats to our communities and families. We must stand together once again against those who seek to divide and weaken us. They want to sow division in our streets, our neighbourhoods, our homes and our minds. They feed off deliberate misinformation, hatred and extremism, carried across social media by algorithms, and funded by hostile states and rogue billionaires determined to pull our communities apart.
Online echo chambers, hatred for those with a different point of view and an unwillingness to seek compromise have led to a politics that is more aggressive, polarised and toxic than we have seen before-certainly in our lifetimes. As a nation, we are proof that people from different backgrounds can live, work and contribute together-a multi-ethnic democracy where neighbours look out for each other-but the foundations on which this country was built have been rocked by the rapid change all around us. Economic shocks and austerity halted the once steady improvement in our living standards. Rapid technological change has transformed how we work and live our lives. Intergenerational unfairness, regional inequality, an ageing population, the Tories’ open borders experiment and the disruption caused by their asylum seeker hotels policy-all of that-has left communities more fearful of the future and more susceptible to siren voices wrongly putting the blame on minority groups.
Today, through the publication of Protecting What Matters , which we laid as a Command Paper in both Houses this afternoon, we have set out our steps towards a more confident, cohesive and united kingdom. Patriotism means bringing our country together, never pulling it apart. It is not patriotic to target someone because of their religion or the colour of their skin. We will resist those who peddle that kind of hatred and division. We choose to celebrate our country and all it stands for. We choose to come together in the best of times and the worst of times. We choose to take on those who seek to divide us. That is patriotism.
Our action plan aims to build confident communities that have hope in the future. There is a direct link between declining high streets and a sense that the country is going backwards. People remember high streets from years gone by that were vibrant, buzzy, great places to socialise with friends and family. There is a real sense of anger, as well as of loss, that so many have been left boarded up and run down, covered in graffiti and full of dumped rubbish-bleak symbols of the wasted Tory years.
People deserve to feel proud of their neighbourhoods. Pride in Place is central to our plan to make that happen. We have now committed £5.8 billion to almost 300 constituencies and begun to set up neighbourhood boards so that local people can decide for themselves how that money is spent. Fair funding for councils means that funding now follows deprivation for the first time in over a decade. We are offering grass-roots organisations £5 million through the common ground fund to tackle division in communities.
We will focus, too, on protecting young people from those who want to warp their minds with hatred and introduce more effective regulation of home education, with the first ever register of children not in school, stronger oversight where children may be at risk and the piloting of a new approach where new safety checks are carried out before a child can be taken out of mainstream schooling.
It is important that children grow up understanding the diversity of our nation, so we are investing £500,000 to link schools serving different communities in order to ensure that they know and understand each other better. We will establish a social cohesion measurement framework so that we can identify risks early and act quickly. We will set expectations on integration for new arrivals and the communities who will receive them, with a focus on learning English so that people have a shared language, can participate in the local community and have respect for British values, our democracy and our way of life. We will end the Tory asylum hotels policy and shape an immigration system that is fair and transparent, and that works better for all communities.
We will not allow hatred to distort the lives and life chances of those who are targeted. Right now, Muslim communities are facing shocking levels of abuse. Anti-Muslim hate crimes are at record levels and now make up almost half of all religious hate crimes-way out of proportion to the size of our Muslim population. Mosques, schools and businesses have been attacked. Women have been harassed. Families are living in fear.
We have a duty to act, but we cannot tackle a problem if we cannot describe it, so today we are adopting a non-statutory definition of anti-Muslim hostility. This gives a clear explanation of unacceptable prejudice, discrimination and hatred targeting Muslims, so that we can take action to stop it. The definition safeguards our fundamental right to freedom of speech-about religion in general or any religion in particular-and ensures that concerns raised in the public interest are protected.
I thank the members of the independent working group chaired by Dominic Grieve, who have provided advice to me on this matter. They have been targets for abuse because they carried out that work. That is utterly unacceptable. I am grateful for their patience and their wisdom. We will now work with groups across society to consider how the definition can be used most effectively and what comes next in disseminating it. We have deposited a copy of the definition in the Library of each House.
We also remain absolutely committed to stamping out antisemitism. We have witnessed murderous antisemitic terrorist attacks both here in the UK and abroad. Sickeningly, those have led to spikes in antisemitic abuse. Since coming to power, the Government have taken decisive steps to combat antisemitism, with record funding for security at synagogues and schools, millions of pounds to tackle antisemitism in schools and universities, and new laws to stop abusive protests outside places of worship.
Today we are going even further to tackle antisemitism in schools and colleges and in the healthcare system and, crucially, clamping down hard on the extremism that so often targets Jews first of all. Work is under way across government as we continue to root out antisemitic hatred from every part of British life. We also hear concerns about hatred and discrimination in the workplace. We are building on protections in our landmark Employment Rights Act 2025, rolling out training across the Civil Service and working with major employers such as the NHS. This will include training to prevent and respond to religious hatred across the entire workforce.
Confronting extremism in all its forms requires more resilient communities. We will implement the anti-extremism policies that the previous Government announced but never brought into force, embedding the 2024 extremism definition, producing an annual state of extremism report and improving our ability to monitor and stop extremist influence online and offline. We will introduce a state threats designation power to disrupt hostile state and proxy organisations. We will also strengthen the Charity Commission’s powers to tackle extremist abuse and ban visas for extremists and hate preachers.
Our universities should always be beacons of free speech, where students feel safe to learn, to disagree and to explore how they see the world, but in recent years this has been undermined and we will not tolerate that. We are introducing new measures to tackle the rise of extremism on our college and university campuses, particularly since the 7 October attacks, which include strengthening the monitoring of extremism on campuses, improving oversight of compliance with the Prevent duty and taking more robust enforcement action where it is needed.
We will also protect people from hate content online. The Government will not stand by as rogue platforms push divisive and aggressive hatred on social media. We are looking at how we can make platforms give their users more control over the algorithms that determine what they see, and we will make full use of the powers in the Online Safety Act 2023.
We have all grown up in a United Kingdom that is, by global standards, remarkably cohesive. That cohesion underpins our economic strength, our democratic freedom and our national security. It is a fundamental part of the Britain we love. We have made our choice. In place of division, we choose unity, and we know that the people of Britain have made the same choice. The division and hate spewed by a small minority will never reflect our country.
The real Britain is where parents put on after-school clubs and summer fêtes to bring their kids together, where towns come out in the pouring rain to support their local football club with the same passion as they would support their country’s team in the World Cup, and where neighbours hold street parties and set up mutual aid groups to look out for each other during Covid. This is a Britain to be proud of, and I commend this plan to the House”.
My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s Statement. When it comes to social cohesion, the penny has clearly started to drop in government departments that something must be done. As has been highlighted by the leader of the Opposition in the other place, there are groups in the United Kingdom whose loyalties do not always align with our national interest. We should call it out as what it is-separatism: groups of people living apart from our country’s way of life, our behaviours, norms, customs, expectations and standards. That is what matters. We should be a multiracial country, not a multicultural one. This policy paper does not go far enough, in our opinion, as to admit that truth, which is why we have serious questions about whether the measures proposed will be enough to solve the problems we face. We are all familiar with the rise of extremism. This paper sets out a new social cohesion measure framework, which will try to monitor levels of social cohesion. However, increased monitoring of the problems needs to be followed through with enforcement to make an actual difference. In addition, the paper promises an annual state of extremism report to set out the nature of extremism in the United Kingdom, with a new state threats designation power. These extremists need to be faced head on. Can the Minister confirm whether the Government will name specific organisations? Last week, I spoke to a group of Jewish university students. Their testimonies of life on campus were...
My Lords, I welcome the Government’s action plan for social cohesion, and I pay tribute to the working group for all the work that has been put into this over the past few years. I am proud that I grew up in a multicultural, multiracial society. I was born in this country, but my parents were not. When I started school at the age of five, I could not speak English, but I learned it very quickly, like most children do, so I am bilingual, like most children who come from backgrounds such as mine, and it is a good thing. Much has been said recently about how multiculturalism has failed. Maybe it is because I grew up in inner London, but I do not think it is a failure at all. I think it is a huge success and something that this country should be proud of. London is the most multicultural, multifaith city in the world, certainly the most successful and the most visited. I am not going to take criticism of that, because I have lived it, and I totally respect people from all faiths and backgrounds who I grew up alongside and went to school with. I turn to some of the most contentious issues, as someone who grew up in a Muslim household as well. Home Office statistics show that Muslims have been the most targeted religious faith group in terms of numbers and overall share in nearly every single year since records began in 2017-18. Hate crimes against British Muslims now account for the highest share, at 45%, with a 19% rise in anti-Muslim offences and a sharp spike since August 2024...
My Lords, I am grateful for the thoughtful comments from the noble Baronesses. Last week, the Secretary of State responsible for housing, communities and local government announced this publication, Protecting What Matters , which sets out the first steps towards a more confident, cohesive and resilient United Kingdom, focusing on three key pillars. First, we will build confident communities. Cohesion relies on confidence in the social contract, yet when people look out from their doorstep, too often they see a future that they did not ask for. Put simply, there is a direct link between the degradation of the public realm and the division that we see happening in our communities. The Pride in Place programme will commit more than £5 billion across almost 300 constituencies to be spent through neighbourhood boards. This alone is not enough: we must meet our responsibility to protect young people. That is why this section includes tougher regulation of home schooling. Secondly, we will build cohesive communities through a social cohesion measurement framework. This means consistent clearer metrics to identify risks early and to act quickly. We will set clearer integration expectations, based on British values, for existing communities and new arrivals, focused on a shared language, participation and respect for British values. We will develop a cross-government integration strategy and conduct a review of English language provision to identify best practice. Strengthening...
My Lords, I remind the House that the next 20 minutes are reserved for questions from Back-Benchers only. I know the whole House would appreciate these rules being adhered to, in order to ensure that as many noble Lords as possible get a suitable opportunity to ask questions of the Minister.
My Lords, can the Minister say why, in the report, there is no mention of Sikhs or Buddhists, one mention of Christians and only two mentions of Hindus? We are incredibly worried that we constantly are being ignored, and yet we are also victims of hate crime-and often from other minority communities. It is about time that we started to address this. As my noble friend on the Front Bench said, we need to talk about one Britain, where everybody is treated equally. I am really disappointed by the report that was issued by SOAS on the riots in Leicester; it is a very poor reflection of what actually happened.
I agree with the noble Baroness that everyone deserves to feel safe in our country. We will work with and celebrate our faith and belief communities to improve understanding of different religions, support tolerance and build a more cohesive and resilient country. We need to continue to support programmes such as Near Neighbours, which brings people together in religiously and ethnically diverse neighbourhoods to collaborate on community initiatives. We also want to grow Inter Faith Week. I have seen a lot of the very good work that is done in interfaith initiatives in my community. It builds an understanding and interaction between people of different faiths. We also need to promote the role of the Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education by supporting improved analysis of its annual reports to understand the role that it can help to play in communities, leading to cohesion. We are taking action to deliver the £92 million places of worship renewal fund to champion freedom of religion or belief globally through sustained diplomatic engagement and multilateral partnerships. I understand the point that the noble Baroness made. The reason for the definition in the report was to tackle the very large percentage of our Muslim community who are suffering from crimes at the moment. I will run a session next week on the whole report, and I hope that people come along to that. The whole programme is directed to making sure that we have more cohesive communities overall.
My Lords, I declare an interest as the CEO of the Muslim Women’s Network UK. I was also a member of the working group on the definition. There was an orchestrated campaign to derail the work. Thankfully, it did not, and I thank the Government for adopting the definition. Are the Government going to compile a list of all the misleading arguments that are being spread out there-the campaign is continuing-so that the public are aware of the counterarguments? The consequence of the misinformation-the disinformation, more accurately-is abuse of Muslim women. They are being targeted. We got a call today with a report of a Muslim woman on the Tube who was told to take off her headscarf. Why are the Government not addressing the safety of Muslim women? I would appreciate it if the Minister did not give the standard answers that I have received before from the Government-£40 million to mosques, millions to the British Muslim Trust and Pride in Place. What specific action is there for Muslim women? It almost feels as if the safety of Muslim women does not matter.
I start by reassuring the noble Baroness that the safety of Muslim women matters a great deal indeed. I could quote the figures of the sums. We are working with the British Muslim Trust to help tackle anti-Muslim hostility. We all have to concentrate on making sure that this actually happens in reality. Through our work across communities on cohesion, combined with the education programme-that will probably be slower-we need make sure that people understand different religions. I hope that will start to tackle the hostility. Having a definition in place is important in helping organisations right across the board-in the case of the Tube line, for example, it might be Transport for London-to understand what this means.
My Lords, I spent 25 years of my life trying to build community cohesion in a north London borough. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, I realised how important that is. That period, which is a generation ago, felt difficult at the time, but it is actually much more difficult now because of the tide of misinformation, disinformation, and the deliberate attempts to breed extremism and create division. That is what this paper is all about and why it is so important. I will ask two specific questions. There are references in this paper to doing more in schools about citizenship and critical thinking. It is crucial that we equip children and young people to challenge the misinformation and disinformation that they receive and to question its sources. I would like some more information as to what is being done about that. The second point is that there is a vague statement about using all the powers to deal with misinformation and disinformation online. I am sure that the Government will try to do that, but could they tell us what is being done to make sure that authoritative material is put out and clearly labelled so that people can have trust in the information they receive?
I am grateful to my noble friend for his many years of work to create cohesive communities. I will just briefly outline some of the measures that are in schools and universities. As he says, it is very important that we make sure that those who are trying to radicalise the minds of our children and young people face the education that stops that happening and that will encourage our young people to engage in the kind of critical thinking that makes them able to ask the questions themselves. First, we are co-designing a cohesion charter with students to bring together a set of agreed principles that guide students’ conduct and engagement on issues that underpin or undermine campus cohesion. Secondly, the Office for Students will further strengthen its monitoring of universities’ efforts to prevent individuals becoming involved in or supporting terrorism. Universities should be alert not only to violent extremism but non-violent extremism, including the certain divisive and intolerant narratives that can reasonably be linked to terrorism. We want to strengthen the Department for Education’s oversight of compliance issues and take appropriate enforcement action. There will be enforcement powers for the Department for Education, and it is important that people have those powers. We are working with the Office for Students to bring together clear and concise information on higher education complaints into a single online portal, so that staff and students have quick and easy...
My Lords, may I take the Minister back to-
My Lords-
We have not heard from the Lib Dems yet.
My Lords, there is much to welcome in the plan, including the agreement to produce an integration plan. It would obviously be very helpful if the Minister could tell us when that is expected to be produced. But it also includes a commitment to refresh the Life in the UK Test. Only last week, in the other place, the Minister for Immigration was unable to answer one of the test questions, namely, “What is the height of the London Eye?” More importantly, he was unable to justify the inclusion of that question in the test. Further, we discovered that there are questions such as, “What is the largest denomination in the United Kingdom?”, to which, apparently, the “correct” answer is £50, whereas, in truth, in Scotland, it is £100. So, the answer that is given is incorrect. We understand that that will last until 2027. Are we really going to have to wait all that time until the Government take action on a test that has received ridicule around the world?
I do not think I know the height of the London Eye either-I will be straight up about that. I will look it up after this. We recognise that a new approach to integration must consider the broader immigration system and what level of immigration is tenable in maintaining a cohesive society and meeting the needs of existing communities. Integration is of course a two-way process. Society must enable participation, while newcomers are expected to engage, learn English, respect our values and contribute. I agree with the noble Lord, in that the test must have sensible questions. I do not have a date for when that will be reviewed, but I will find out for him after this evening. As part of this publication, we will set clear expectations for integration, including English language proficiency and participation in work, and we will develop a cross-government integration strategy. Efforts will focus on removing barriers to participation, supporting underrepresented groups and fostering the shared sense of values across the UK that I know, right across the Chamber, we all want to see.
My Lords, I take the Minister back to the question that she was asked by my noble friend Lady Scott in the context of the excellent report Time for Change by the Union of Jewish Students. This unfortunately makes it clear that antisemitism is being normalised across campuses. If university leaders fail to take action, how will they be held accountable? I have looked in the plan that has been published and there is nothing there about holding those university leaders accountable, so what specifically are the Government going to do to make sure that antisemitism is not normalised on our university campuses?
It is clear that there are some shocking statistics in that report. We must focus on making sure that Jewish students, along with students of all faiths, feel safe in our universities. On the noble Lord’s specific question about sanctions for university leaders, I will have to come back to him. I do not have the information on that in front of me. With all the very concerted work that is set out in the programme in relation to campuses and universities, the Government have a clear intent to make sure that our students can feel safe and be safe on a university campus.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, I exhort the Whip, since he started by asking people to be extremely brief in their questions, to give some practical effort to controlling the Chamber in that regard. I welcome the Government’s overall strategy but want to ask specifically about anti-Muslim hostility. The paper accompanying the definition says that if you are unable to define an issue, you are far less able to tackle it. Can the Government define hostility and give examples of what behaviour would be covered by hostility? The other aspect of the paper, in Chapter 5, says that it will need to evolve over time. What tests will be used for the evolution over time, and what do the Government anticipate doing over time in terms of a public consultation?
As the noble Baroness says, the reason for a definition is that if you cannot clearly define an issue, you cannot properly identify it, measure it or address it. This definition provides the clarity needed to respond consistently and effectively. It helps to distinguish between legitimate debate-which remains fully protected-and unacceptable hostility, prejudice and discrimination directed at individuals, enabling people to name and describe specific forms of hostility that Muslims experience, helping to build understanding in wider society and giving victims confidence that they will be taken seriously. Government and organisations will then have a consistent framework for training, reporting, data collection and prevention work to improve how incidents are recognised and addressed. That is the longer-term process. This is protecting people, not beliefs, and helping to prevent harmful behaviour while safeguarding open discussion and criticism of ideas.
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for the Statement. I strongly support this action plan. Like my noble friend Lord Harris, I say this in the context of having spent decades on the front line of where cohesion fails. Very few people in this House have had to pick up the bodies at the endpoint of failure, where cohesion has fractured and where enmity has played out on our streets. I have seen that in my career as a soldier and as a firefighter in the most terrible way. I would like to see non-partisan politics in this space because, regardless of which Government have brought this plan forward, we should all support it. We should all support it with the way we use our language because not doing so-with an increasingly divided politics-ends in a most terrible way. How will we measure early the impact and effectiveness of this plan? If we do not, I am afraid that the first we will know of its ineffectiveness is when the most terrible things play out.
I thank my noble friend not just for his very important question but for all his work on this during his career. We are setting out a bold new approach here, not just tackling hate speech but countering extremism by adopting and implementing definitions of extremism. We will publish the annual state of extremism report. That is one way of making sure that we are keeping a focus on the issue. We are strengthening Charity Commission powers to tackle extremist abuse, including the power to shut down charities and suspend trustees-and there are the measures I have already mentioned on tackling extremism on university campuses and in health. We will work to implement the definition to make sure it has real effect, making sure that public bodies do not confer legitimacy, funding or influence on extremist groups. We will work with the Crown Prosecution Service and the police to ensure robust use of existing legislation on that harmful extremist conduct. As my noble friend said, the consequences of not taking action here are critical and dangerous. We will make sure that all organisations, now that they have this definition, can take action and monitor what is happening.
My Lords, I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union. It is not particularly helpful to accuse those who have expressed concern that this definition will operate like a Muslim blasphemy law by the backdoor of spreading dangerous disinformation, not least because knowingly spreading dangerous disinformation is a criminal offence under Section 179 of the Online Safety Act. Suggesting that those who raise the alarm about the chilling effect of this definition on free speech should be prosecuted makes the point far more eloquently than we could. I note that when the Communities Secretary unveiled the definition of anti-Muslim hatred in the other place, he said that he hoped it would be taken up by the police; the Minister just expressed the same view. Is it the Government’s intention that when someone is found to have said or done something that meets the definition of anti-Muslim hostility, it will be recorded by the police? Could it then be disclosed in an enhanced criminal record check if that person applies for a job as, say, a teacher at a school in a Muslim neighbourhood?
I set out very clearly that this is a non-statutory definition. It is there to assist organisations to understand what we mean by anti-Muslim hostility. I remind the noble Lord that there is no blasphemy law in this country and that this Government have no intention of introducing one.
My Lords, the strategy places significant emphasis on engaging faith leaders as key arbiters of community cohesion. However, does the Minister agree that true social cohesion is built not on the mediation of religious blocs but on the primacy of civic values and a singular secular rule of law? When religious sensitivities collide with fundamental civic rights, such as LGBT equality, will the Government prioritise civic democratic values over the avoidance of religious offence?
The importance of this strategy is that it concentrates on all these angles, including creating confident communities and protecting that confidence. We have to create the conditions for cohesion. Our aim is to bring people together through community-led schooling, youth and sports infrastructure, trusted local venues and major cultural and sporting events with strong community legacies, focusing on restoring pride in place through long-term investment in left-behind areas, support for local media and high streets, improved digital connectivity, neighbourhood policing, tackling anti-social behaviour and reducing reoffending. All these things are positioned as essential to safety, pride and cohesion. I hope that this action plan will take us a long way towards doing that.